Reality — That Thing We’re Living In — Is Not Always Entertaining

But what is, may not be that good for us

Reality TV is one of life’s little ironies. Made to mimic what humans do naturally, only with a script.

Getting to see people do what they would only do if you paid them — and apparently, they pay pretty well.

Enough for some to eat bugs, wade through muck, and pretend to be in love when really, they’re not and generally make a complete fool of themselves on television.

What’s not to like?

But I don’t.

I don’t hate it, I try not to hate, but it comes close.

Having watched Reality Shows like The Bachelor, Naked and Afraid, and Judge Judy in whatever robe she’s currently wearing, I can’t help but cringe.

It’s fake. It’s phony. It’s pretending to be real when it isn’t.

It’s pretending to be people behaving naturally when they’re not. Like pretending to be a serial killer by stabbing blow-up dolls.

I liked to pretend when I was seven. I could be a pirate, a cowboy, or a soldier all in the same day. And If I didn’t have a gun — no problem, my thumb and forefinger became one and I shot the hell out of my living room and felt good about it.

But it’s 2023. I am no longer seven. I no longer have the capacity for “killing” 100 soldiers because they wore gray uniforms or thinking that all Indians were bad — when they weren’t.

I know that television is not real. Even when watching the News today, it’s often not real. And that fact alone messes with my understanding of reality. Which I find a little frightening.

Reality is not something you want to get into open arguments with.

They put you away for doing that in public. For talking to your grandmother on a park bench when nothing is sitting next to you but a pigeon.

Reality is what’s created around us. You push the little black button by the front door and the bell rings. You open the fridge and there’s food inside. You type “Sex” in Google’s search line and 3,514,782,980 pages of boobs and butts appear. That’s reality.

What isn’t, is Survivor — and similar TV shows.

A program where 16–20 “castaways” are selected for possessing various survival skills: Like being chatty, nosey, stubborn, deceitful, obnoxious, nice, arrogant, athletic, pretty, or a stud.

Then they are transported to some desolate location, like Staten Island, Bakersfield, or East Lansing — just kidding.

Usually to some Pacific Island, the Australian Outback, anywhere, where their survival can be put to the test.

While every minute is filmed and edited by a crew of producers and technicians that live comfortably nearby, where they eat well, and have regular access to sunblock, soap, and portable toilets while making sure nobody cheats by having Big Macs airlifted onto the island.

Then like the real Robinson Crusoe, all the castaways go through challenges devised by bored and slightly demented trainers, designed to burn calories, create mild trauma, and leave at least one member in tears by the end of every episode.

But it’s not real.

Real death and privation are not available because there are people all around, all the time to prevent it, and their insurance company won’t allow anyone to actually die

But they make us believe that they just might — given that so and so just took what’s-her-name into his tent and you-know-who is looking for a fight because of it.

And after 44 seasons we’re all still believing.

And because reality just isn’t real anymore.

Reality is more accurately fabricated reality. Because the stuff we’re used to, the stuff our parents watched on television and we got to see glimpses of from the top of the stairs is different today.

Today’s reality is driven by algorithms. Where bad news gets multiplied and amplified until all we see are carefully crafted segments of graphics, and live feeds — analyzed, digitized, and transmogrified until what we think and what we see become irrelevant.

Because reality is measured by how much revenue it generates not by how close it is to the truth.

If reality looks like a rag-tag “patriot’s army” storming the Capital for freedom, then that is Reality today.

If it’s a man with orange hair telling the world, his world that up is down and secrets are only secrets when kept secret, but once they’re leaked, they’re no longer secret and thus no longer a problem.

Reality TV today supposedly draws on actual reality, the things we say and do and think as we make our way through breakfast and onto the freeway and into an office where people work and think some more, all in an effort to survive.

But actual survival is boring.

Let’s face it, eating a breakfast burrito from a vending machine and watching it spin in a microwave cannot compare with spearing a fish, and “accidentally” spearing your teammate who goes into anaphylactic shock and has to be medevacked off the island.

And watching a handsome guy make it with 23 beautiful women before choosing one as the love of his life, can’t compare to your neighbor Riley, filming his date night for YouTube.

Reality — that thing we’re living in — is not always entertaining.

Reality is working two jobs and pretending it’s normal.

Reality is renting again because equity funds are buying homes faster than new ones can be built.

Reality is Ukraine and the daily updates.

Reality is Trump — still f*cking talking.

And reality is our Supreme Court Justices believing that gifts are from Santa and there are no repercussions to being “persuaded,” as long as you know the law.

Now, Judge Judy is funny, sure. She’s hard as nails and rips new ones for people all the time. But she’s also one of the highest-paid celebs on television. Like, the Gross National Product of Fiji, kind of high.

And for what. To see hundreds of contestants, get ridiculed, lie, pretend, lie some more, get caught and fined $1,317?

Does watching her make us feel better and more secure with our legal system?

Does watching Naked and Alive give us insight into human frailty — or just happy we’re sitting in our living rooms with shorts on?

I hate Reality TV (okay I said it) because it mocks reality. It makes fun of all of us and has somehow gotten the majority of us to laugh along with them.

Television isn’t real and no one pretends that it is, it’s entertainment. Same for movies starring dinosaurs and comic book heroes that actually, don’t exist.

They mirror reality and then twist it to make us laugh or keep us engaged through 10 episodes. That’s the trade-off for sitting through the commercials.

So, why call them a Reality Show when they’re not very real? When they highlight the negative and focus on conflict, deception, and broken hearts?

Why tune in?

Why do we spend hours watching people live off the grid? Feeding themselves. Finding water, avoiding bears, and stitching their wounds, while we watch and eat chicken nuggets and spicy buffalo wings from the local supermarket?

Why do we watch people losing their minds and their businesses and then listen for hours as experts harangue and ridicule the owners into some version of success and then watch them do it again next week?

The show Jackass, the movies that followed, and others about what won’t a person eat or do for money tell us that we like watching people get really uncomfortable.

We like laughing at videos where bicycle frames are driven into men’s sensitive parts or little kids sliding unplanned into a toilet.

How does watching eight overly coiffed women for 60 minutes, calling themselves the Real Housewives of Waukegan, improve our lives, our perspectives of women, or our mental health?

And yet, they keep getting renewed and we keep watching them.

But then I like mysteries, whodunnits where cops from every country with a camera and decent lighting, fight crime and track down serial killers, so what does that say about me?

I like puzzles being solved, even those involving knives, used produce bags, and old Volvos. They’re interesting to watch.

But after a while, after a few hundred murders or kidnappings or terrorists from Orlando threatening to destroy Disney World, I too begin to wonder what I’m doing and why.

Reality is unavoidable. It’s all around us every day and try as we might, there’s no escaping it — well, not one where we survive the process. And yet we are nothing if not ingenious in finding ways to avoid Real Reality by watching Fake Reality.

We’ll avoid asking Johnnie to stop logging in 7 hours a day on his cellphone but instead, will grab a beer and turn on the latest Slapping Tournament, cringing the whole time as one contestant after another is hauled away unconscious.

And maybe it’s genetics or our long distant past that conjures up images of natural dangers and real threats that keep us moving away from today’s hard stuff — giving us a little needed time and space to deal with it.

Maybe Fake Reality is therapeutic like volcanic mud baths or stupefying dives into Arctic waters. Maybe it destresses us and gives us a little breathing room to take on tomorrow.

Or maybe it’s a waste of time.

Merely a way to make money, like spending $1800 for rear seat heaters when you’re the only one driving the car. It sounds cool.

For now, Reality TV is here to stay unless something changes.

Like our viewing patterns, our threshold for the ridiculous or the people behind all these shows start running out of ideas.

Until then I’ll continue watching my whodunnits.

I’ll suspend my disbelief when some guy swallows a frog, a lightbulb, or a carburetor from a ’58 Ford Fairlane. And instead, will take joy and comfort in those YouTube videos showing cute dogs teaching their owners how to have a little fun in life.